I... think we are having a miscommunication. What do you mean by "their views"? My initial impression of what you meant by "their views" was "I, Neo-Nazi Nate, think we in the Western World would be better off without more Muslims in it". Do you mean something else? Because as I mentioned, a metric fuckton of Westerners believe in that view or related views, enough so that 20% of the voting population in a plethora of European countries feel that preventing more Muslims from immigrating was the most important issue to them. That doesn't mean that 80% of the people disagree with that view, only that it's not as important as voting for Labor or Green issues.

ijuin wrote:There is indeed a significant population who want the “outsiders” to leave, but the portion of them who would condone murder is usually small unless the society has been whipped into the kind of frenzy usually only seen in wars and civil wars.

Even if that's true, you're missing the part where whipping the fringe right into that kind of frenzy is exactly what's been happening for the last five years or so.

"'Legacy code' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrupwww.commodorejohn.com - in case you were wondering, which you probably weren't.

CorruptUser wrote:I dont have Twitter. Can you post a transcript or image?

Neither do I, but I can 'lurk' via public browsing. Probably being tracked for it, in some "unique visitor count" way or whatver, but I'm taking that as read.

That tweet linked to above says:

Per pool: Trump called the terror attack a "horrible, horrible thing" and said he called the PM to convey US "sorrow," then turned to “crimes of all kinds coming through our southern border.” He added, "People hate the word invasion, but that’s what it is.”

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the US, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

This would be an example of where right and left-wing social media activists have tactics that are not dissimilar.

While right-wing social media activists attempt to rally around a shared social identity/experience based on race or nationality, left-wing social media activists attempt to rally around a shared social identity/experience based on minority status - be it race, gender, sexuality and so on.

Only centrists (ie. moderate left and right-wingers) prioritise treating people first and foremost as individuals.

Left-wing social media activists also have their conspiracy theories and plots from within (eg. quick to blame ills on 'big business'), and it's not like they don't also have a problem with antisemitism - witness the problems the Labour Party in the UK is having rooting it out...

Social media? This is a right-wing radio host who is saying that this killing is a left-wing attack because his primary objective is to get Americans to not confront right-wing racism, propaganda and violence, because he is a fascist. There is absolutely nobody on the left making excuses for terrorists like this, not on social media and definitely not among wealthy media elites.

Centrists do not value human life; self-identified centrists are people who value the status quo and take the position that defends this at all costs. For example, a large group of people want people to not exist because of their race or non-conforming gender and are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve it, and there is a large and wealthy political elite that would make it happen, and a group of people who are willing to punch them to get them to stop. The centrist, having absolutely no belief system whatsoever other than the status quo is good enough, are incapable of seeing anything but rules as black and white - the left uses violence against fascists and the right uses violence against minorities, they both break the rules so they are both bad.

And now we can see fishhook theory in action. The centrist is more afraid of the far-left than mainstream right, but only because they are closer to the mainstream right, to the point where the centrist will dedicate all their energy to attacking the left without ever issuing a single criticism against the right. In the end, the centrist sides with the fascists, which is why the fascists are able to gain enough support. Since the main thing the centrist values is the status quo, and fascists want less change than leftist, the fascist and centrist are natural allies.

What centrists want is to not fix any of the problems that led to fifty people getting killed, because that would require acknowledging too many uncomfortable things about the free market - like how principles of free speech are not more important than stopping the propaganda that is actually leading to death.

The center is defending a politician punching a kid in the face for breaking an egg on him, because violence is violence and one rule breaking justifies the other.

Thesh wrote:The center is defending a politician punching a kid in the face for breaking an egg on him, because violence is violence and one rule breaking justifies the other.

I don't know if "defending" is the proper word. I do know that a centrist is fine with both of them going to jail, evil status quo violators that they are.

Addendum: Yes, I'm making fun. The point is, centrists are most obviously exemplified by apathy. Something has to happen that affects them directly order to get any reaction and then, yes, they do tend to fight for the status quo. Because they have laid their game according to the rules of the status quo, and if the status quo changes, it leads to poor outcome. Absent that, they tend to vote for the politician making the loudest splash, which leads to Trump. (I have no idea why this engenders a picture in my mind of a huge belly flop.)

The people I saw defending him were mostly social media saying that if you get hit you have a right to hit back, and it's okay that they choked him because they were professionals and knew how to do it properly but, to be fair, not all bootlickers (EDIT: thonglickers?) are centrists; they could just be fascists defending a fascist.

(Noted at the time was that it was a spontaneous left-handed jab from the politician who had been a boxer many years before, and because of the crowd and 'protection' officers it turned out more comedic than it could have been, if he'd aimed a good right jab, which he was known to have had in days of yore, broken the protestor's jaw and lost any public sympathy he got.)

Don't know much about the incident being referred to as just having happened, so I'll leave analysis of that to others.

What a rambling and obtuse article. And I speak as an often rambling and obtuse person myself (though rarely by intent).

I don't even know what it was trying to say. I got to "the quote" and had not yet been given context. I read on to the point where it brought British politics into it in some skewed and dissimilar way, starts talking about Soros's reputation/repudiation and then I give up. It seemed to be setting up why being anti-Israel is also necessarily antisemitic, but then swerving onto the next half-hearted approach.

Maybe it cleverly coalesced all this into coherence at the denouement of the piece, however much more scrolling I would have needed to get there. Maybe I misread the sense of an early bit and I'd headed down the wrong garden-path of the discourse, at tgis late hour. Maybe I'm just somewhere else on the moral relativism spectrum than I always thought and I have tainted opinions myself. Maybe Thesh got the point you wanted to make, but I didn't, and I thought I should say so in case you can forestall other complaints about you apparently not delivering on the brief.

Long story short, Ilhan Omar has been using anti-semitic dogwhistles in addition to criticizing Israel. While it's definitely possible to be against Netanyahu's expansionist policies without being anti-semitic, and it's possible to coincidentally use the dogwhistles without knowing they were actually dogwhistles, that she's doing both is disconcerting to say the least.

My understanding of that article is that in the context of her making other statements - which, in the context of other statements not made by her (no examples are given), may be construed as antisemetic dogwhistles but are not problematic in and of themselves - some of the words she used are potentially careless as some people might interpret them as antisemetic, but the statement is not problematic in and of itself, and she's being unfairly singled out.

What exactly did he say? I don't follow the UKs minutiae. Any equivalent in America? Other than literally everything that suggests any Jews are influencing politics being a dogwhistle (which, the context is a foreign lobby influencing laws in America to prevent boycotting Israeli genocide), what makes anything she said problematic? How could she worded her criticism of a group that exists to promote Israel without a dogwhistle?

I would lean towards censorship by association. Simply because of the direction Israel seems to have gone in terms of taking land.

This spoilered image below has been contested, but I'd need access to an impartial physical book showing borders of Palestine before Israel was established, maybe a month after, and then at various dates. The map is a bit dated.

Spoiler:

Also, I have noted what seems to be PR bots on many articles comment sections about Israel saying things like:"There is no such nation as Palestine and no such people as the Palestinians." (sometimes mentioning that they don't show up on maps and similar things)"Those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed.""Israel is our only ally in the Middle East." - Usually in response to why we send as much money as we do to Israel

The first one is particularly problematic. If those are indeed PR bots it may indicate that the government of Israel is attempting to erase an entire population from history. At least when the Europeans expanded into the United States, we recognized that the Native Americans were here first and didn't say that they never existed in the first place. We also made some attempts at reparations (I don't know how much though). I understand that there was a conflict in which Israel gained a bit of territory? Although, it seems strange that post 1900's a developed country would use that as a reason to take land. I think that if a country knew better they wouldn't do that (though I am aware that some countries didn't seem to know better).

That image is problematic because 1) it includes lands as Palestinian that was owned by Palestinian Jews, 2) it includes land owned by Arab/Muslim Israelis as Jewish, and 3) it completely ignores the land that was owned by the Ottomans (i.e., nearly all of it prior to WWI). And that doesn't even get into the Negev desert, which wasn't really "owned" by anyone in the traditional sense.

Before the Ilhan Omar thing blew up, I stumbled upon one of those dark corners of the internet where 'Liberal Thought' is a monolithic thing synonymous with the agenda of the Democratic Party. (in this particular corner, it's called 'Social Justice' and is considered merely misguided) There I was exposed to an insidious brain-bug that is obviously hateful nonsense, but I nevertheless find difficult to completely dismiss.

Spoilered to avoid inadvertent memetic contamination.

Spoiler:

the short version is that although Jews are considered an 'oppressed' group, they 'paradoxically' have socio-economic and educational outcomes more in-line with 'privileged' groups. This purportedly violates some of the 'core tenets of Social Justice', specifically that oppression is inextricably and directly linked to worse socio-economic outcomes. In order to resolve this apparent paradox, 'Social Justice' will inevitably redefine Jews to be a privileged group, leading to 'Social Justice' becoming a haven for anti-semitism as another 'core tenet' is that it is impossible to be racist/prejudiced against a privileged group.

At the time, the drama surrounding the Women's March late last year was used as supporting evidence, and now I fear that Rep. Omar's comments slot all to well into this theory.

I had a longer post written out about this, but it was more focused on the ideology exemplified by this theory and the corner of the internet from which it sprang than on current events, and that's probably more appropriate to discuss over in Serious Business so I'm considering cleaning the cut content up and starting a discussion over there.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

Edit: there are possibly more of the "secretly running the world" stereotypes about Jews than about most other groups, but I question whether that represents anything close to the majority of antisemitic views.

CorruptUser wrote:That image is problematic because 1) it includes lands as Palestinian that was owned by Palestinian Jews, 2) it includes land owned by Arab/Muslim Israelis as Jewish, and 3) it completely ignores the land that was owned by the Ottomans (i.e., nearly all of it prior to WWI). And that doesn't even get into the Negev desert, which wasn't really "owned" by anyone in the traditional sense.

That's why I said it was contested. I'd like to know if the 2007 map is true? To what extent? Things like settlements happening make me feel that something is going on, but I just can't get reliable information (it's hard to believe a lot of stuff on the internet).

Quercus wrote:

CorruptUser wrote:Bear in mind that most antisemitic stereotypes are about Jews' supposed superiority, whereas virtually all other racism is about supposed inferiority.

Edit: there are possibly more of the "secretly running the world" stereotypes about Jews than about most other groups, but I question whether that represents anything close to the majority of antisemitic views.

I really haven't put much thought in the idea of Jews secretly running the world. Maybe. If they are then as long as they are responsible leaders I'm fine with it. Maybe even unseat Trump... (wishful thinking).

Edit: there are possibly more of the "secretly running the world" stereotypes about Jews than about most other groups, but I question whether that represents anything close to the majority of antisemitic views.

Also, racism has a long history of assigning "positive" characteristics to "degenerate" races! In the US, African-American slaves were often described as possessing superior physical attributes; Asian races were described as possessing particularly cunning minds, etc. This is not a thing unique to antisemitism (I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise!).

It's part of racism's narrative: The 'positive' stuff is easier to sell ("I'm not demeaning them, I'm saying they're better at this than us!"). And once you swallow that pill, you've accepted the framework that makes racism permissible. It becomes so much easier to sell you on the negative stuff ("If black people can be stronger, why can't white people be smarter?").

EdgarJPublius wrote:the short version is that although Jews are considered an 'oppressed' group, they 'paradoxically' have socio-economic and educational outcomes more in-line with 'privileged' groups. This purportedly violates some of the 'core tenets of Social Justice', specifically that oppression is inextricably and directly linked to worse socio-economic outcomes. In order to resolve this apparent paradox, 'Social Justice' will inevitably redefine Jews to be a privileged group, leading to 'Social Justice' becoming a haven for anti-semitism as another 'core tenet' is that it is impossible to be racist/prejudiced against a privileged group.

This is a deeply flawed and hierarchical view regarding the complexities of privilege (not to mention one that treats both Judaism and antisemitism as monolithic entities). They might as well argue that being poor means you're incapable of being racist.

Racism and poverty are correlative, but they are not at all the same thing; experiencing racism does not 'make' you poor anymore than being outside makes you wet (sure, it can be a contributing factor -- but only if it's raining, and only if you don't have an umbrella). Hell, if anything, this is just more capitalism-affirming garbage ("black people could succeed at capitalism if they didn't experience so much racism!" Yeah, no; capitalism isn't designed to let poor people get rich).

Re: 'Social Justice' -- I'd apply that label to myself. I've never heard anything this silly in the "meaniehead" circles I travel through. I think the term you're looking for here isn't "Social Justice" -- it's just "idiots".

There are different flavors of tribalism, which are sometimes contradictory.

Some flavors are narcissistic: "I'm inherently superior to those people, because their group is inferior to my group in every way, but especially morally; they don't deserve the same privileges I enjoy."

Other flavors are fearful: "Those people are a threat to my group because they are actually superior to us in one or two ways--stronger, or smarter, or harder working, or more fertile--and therefore my group needs to maintain our systemic advantages over them, intimidate them, and constantly keep them in their place, to make sure we're not defeated by them."

I think if you can build a village in someone else's fields and the government gives you five years to move back out of that field and while you're there you can shoot the owner of that field because he's picking olives from his trees on his land quarter of a mile from your illegal settlement and the government accepts that he was too close to you and you were scared, you're part of a privileged class.

Doesn't mean your 539th cousin 48 times removed living 6000 miles away isn't subjected to unjustified harassment and discrimination. Doesn't mean your child born in that house and unaware that the land is stolen deserves to be blown up along with it during their 4th birthday party. Doesn't mean your 7211th cousin 666 time removed who happens to follow a religion very close to the one you follow is privileged. Does mean you're privileged.

Why the hell would All Jews Everywhere Ever all be part of the same class and have the same education / employment / health outcomes? Does anyone expect that of Muslims, like the working poor of Yemen, the Saudi royal family and that Muslim family in India that got burned to death because the local Hindu preacher spread a rumour they'd been eating beef? Does anybody see Catholic bishops getting away with raping children and thing every Methodist in China enjoys diplomatic immunity?

Any site that says The Jewsanything is perpetuating the notion that The Jews is a single organism with a single mind or some sort of psychically controlled cult with an Elder Abomination lurking in an abyss somewhere controlling The Jews and feasting on the entrails of babies cast overboard and that's why The Jews made us start the Syrian civil war and create the refugee crisis and it's why The Jews use front companies to sponsor groups that prevent refugees being picked up in the Med when their boats sink and it's BULLSHIT.

Two days earlier, a group of angry teenage boys descended from those caravans, an extension of a nearby Jewish settlement, and chased his family, including his 75-year-old great-grandmother, out of their grove. The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has urged his people to plant a million trees in protest while begging the Israeli forces to protect them, while the Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak has condemned the radical Israeli settlers as "thugs".

The violence has gone beyond the olive harvest. Israel's attorney-general has called for an investigation into recent settler riots, in which scores of Palestinian cars had tires slashed and Muslim graves were defaced with paint after the Israeli army razed an illegal settler outpost.

"Whoever expresses himself in such a manner belongs in jail. We've had enough of all this violence. Verbal violence that brings physical violence - and we will not abide this," the outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, told his cabinet recently.

But in the middle of Malik's grove was an unexpected peacemaker - a lanky, long-bearded Israeli rabbi who has made it his mission to lead Jewish volunteers into the West Bank to shield Palestinian farmers as they bring in their crops.

"I want to give credit to the security services, they are being more active this year against these attacks. But it's a real tide of settler violence this year and they are just overwhelmed," said Mr Ascherman, 48, who has been running the olive harvest campaign since 2002. "I've been beaten by security forces. I've been attacked by settlers. I've had my car stolen by Palestinians - it's equal opportunity out here in the West Bank. But I think it's a risk worth taking.

"As a Jew, as a rabbi, as an Israeli and as a Zionist, it's the right thing to do."

There isn't some weird and ever-expanding group of The Jews with gills in their necks. There isn't some weird and ever-expanding group of The Muslims with spiked tails. There isn't some weird and ever-expanding group of El Hind with horns on their foreheads.There are a lot of people, and some of them are vicious, bigoted arseholes.

The Great Hippo wrote:This is a deeply flawed and hierarchical view regarding the complexities of privilege (not to mention one that treats both Judaism and antisemitism as monolithic entities). They might as well argue that being poor means you're incapable of being racist.

Racism and poverty are correlative, but they are not at all the same thing; experiencing racism does not 'make' you poor anymore than being outside makes you wet (sure, it can be a contributing factor -- but only if it's raining, and only if you don't have an umbrella). Hell, if anything, this is just more capitalism-affirming garbage ("black people could succeed at capitalism if they didn't experience so much racism!" Yeah, no; capitalism isn't designed to let poor people get rich).

One of the reasons I think this argument is so pernicious is that the flawed, hierarchical view of privilege it is based on is one that has some currency. There are people who really do think that only certain groups can experience racism, and that privilege equals outcomes. It's easy for me to imagine that Rep. Omar's comments were born out of some reasoning very similar to that.

Roosevelt wrote:

I wrote:Does Space Teddy Roosevelt wrestle Space Bears and fight the Space Spanish-American War with his band of Space-volunteers the Space Rough Riders?

EdgarJPublius wrote:One of the reasons I think this argument is so pernicious is that the flawed, hierarchical view of privilege it is based on is one that has some currency. There are people who really do think that only certain groups can experience racism, and that privilege equals outcomes.

I'm white. It's literally impossible for me to experience systemic racism in this part of America. My white privilege has produced numerous outcomes for me -- such as reduced risk of severe legal penalties.

If all you're saying that this outcome (getting off easy) itself doesn't equal privilege (everyone who gets off easy doesn't, by definition, have white privilege), then we are in agreement. But right now, if I shoot and kill a man, I am all but statistically guaranteed to get a lighter sentence than a black man with the same criminal past who commits an identical crime. That's a very clear outcome of my privilege.

You're implicitly diving groups up much further than common labels, and thus not using "groups" in the same way as Edgar was. You are correct in that certain groups, under certain circumstances, will no experience discrimination. The fallacy Edgar was alluding to was assuming that because discrimination of a group doesn't occur under one set of circumstances proves the discrimination doesn't occur under others. Specifically ,Jews may (depending on circumstances) be the subjects of discrimination, the objects of discrimination, both, or neither.

statistically guaranteed

Ouch, please do not use that phrase again.

The thing about recursion problems is that they tend to contain other recursion problems.

Thesh wrote:My understanding of that article is that in the context of her making other statements - which, in the context of other statements not made by her (no examples are given), may be construed as antisemetic dogwhistles but are not problematic in and of themselves - some of the words she used are potentially careless as some people might interpret them as antisemetic, but the statement is not problematic in and of itself, and she's being unfairly singled out.

Quizatzhaderac wrote:You're implicitly diving groups up much further than common labels, and thus not using "groups" in the same way as Edgar was. You are correct in that certain groups, under certain circumstances, will no experience discrimination. The fallacy Edgar was alluding to was assuming that because discrimination of a group doesn't occur under one set of circumstances proves the discrimination doesn't occur under others. Specifically ,Jews may (depending on circumstances) be the subjects of discrimination, the objects of discrimination, both, or neither.

I'm pretty sure being "white" is a common label. Regardless, I'm not really understanding how this relevant?

Quizatzhaderac wrote:

statistically guaranteed

Ouch, please do not use that phrase again.

The Great Hippo wrote:all but statistically guaranteed

The point of the 'all but' was to highlight that it's not statistically guaranteed (because nothing can be statistically guaranteed; statistics are probabilities!).

Statistics are measures of observed results, not the underlying probabilities themselves. Theres a reason for Student's distribution (right around St Patty's day no less).

As far as the "statistically guaranteed" stuff, quexatlclogger is technically correct on a minor point that has no real bearing on the conversation. The chance of receiving a worse sentence than a black guy isnt similar to winning the worlds worst lottery jackpot, but that the number is not anywhere close to 50% is a huge problem.

The Great Hippo wrote:I'm pretty sure being "white" is a common label.

True, but that's what you said. You said "Only certain groups *can* experience racism...." and "I'm white. It's literally impossible for me to experience systemic racism in this part of America."

White, and in "this part of America" is a sub-group of white.

Regardless, I'm not really understanding how this relevant?

You were responding to EdgarJPublius. Are you questioning how how the statement you were responding to is relevant to your statement or why it's important to maintain an equivalence of terms?

The point of the 'all but' ....

Then your are "all but a giant dwarf". The concepts don't go together. A more specific statement, like "The statistics show a 99% probability of X, which all but guarantees..." would be fine, but you just threw together two contradictory concepts with no explanation on how they might fit together.

The chance of receiving a worse sentence than a black guy isn't similar to winning the worlds worst lottery jackpot, but that the number is not anywhere close to 50% is a huge problem.

Let's stop and make sure we agree on facts.

The black guy is going to get a tougher sentence about 87% (1.5 sigma) of the time. The term "likely" fits (as does "unfair"). The term "very likely" is a stretch. The term "guaranteed" just wrong and "all but guaranteed" sucks pretty badly here as well. If you (or Hippo) are of the belief that this probability is something like 99%, then we disagree on fact.

The thing about recursion problems is that they tend to contain other recursion problems.